Chapter 8 - The Watcher
For three nights, someone watched the ranch.
Corvin saw the same lantern moving along the western ridge.
He refused to chase it.
Instead, he asked Daniel to help inspect the old barn.
Behind a beam they found a small wooden box.
Inside were photographs taken over several years.
The ranch.
The well.
Corvin.
His father.
And Lena.
The newest photograph had been taken only two weeks earlier.
Lena examined it.
“That is not our person.”
“How do you know?”
“The photographer stood on the east ridge.”
Corvin looked at Daniel.
“Who has access?”
Daniel named several possibilities.
Then a horse appeared at the edge of the property.
A young woman dismounted.
She introduced herself as Ruth Mercer.
Silas's daughter.
“I came alone,” she said.
Corvin kept his distance.
“Why?”
“Because my father is preparing to destroy the original records.”
Ruth handed him a folded note.
She had copied part of his father's old ledger.
The final page contained a reference to a bank deposit.
Not money stolen from the ranch.
Money placed there for the community.
A trust fund.
Corvin realized that the financial mystery mattered as much as the land.
“How much?”
Ruth named a figure large enough to shock him.
“Where is it now?”
“My father moved it.”
“Why?”
“To finance the acquisition.”
Lena's expression hardened.
Ruth lowered her eyes.
“I know what my family has done.”
Corvin asked why she was helping.
“My mother died believing my father would eventually stop.”
She handed him another document.
It showed that Harlan Mercer had planned the original fraud.
Silas had continued it.
But one signature surprised Corvin.
His uncle Marcus.
Ruth whispered, “Your uncle didn't just take money.”
“He signed the first agreement to sell the protected valley.”
Corvin felt the room shrink around him.
His family had been divided from the beginning.
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And now he understood why his father had written that the land was not his alone.
The ranch was built on a promise broken by people Corvin had loved.
